


Summer Haunts

by littlerhymes



Category: Bandom, Panic At The Disco, The Cab
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Time Loop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-03-13
Updated: 2009-03-13
Packaged: 2017-10-17 00:10:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/170840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littlerhymes/pseuds/littlerhymes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"what if there was a time summer went on forever? and no one noticed. the kids kept raging and going to the beach. no school." (Pete Wentz's twitter, 1 March 2009)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Summer Haunts

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to proteinscollide for beta reading.

Another summer morning and Ryan wakes to the sun in his eyes.

When it's clear that sleep isn't returning any time soon he grudgingly stumbles downstairs, scratching at the fading sunburn on his arms. He groans when he sees Spencer and the twins ready and waiting with their towels and beach bags. "But I only just got up!"

"Yeah, we noticed," Spencer says drily. With a twist to his mouth he adds, "Come on, Ryan, hurry up. It's the last day of summer, remember?"

"How could I forget?" he mutters.

So he finds himself traipsing down to the beach with Spencer before he's had a chance to eat breakfast. Crystal and Jackie run on ahead; the soles of their matching pink flip-flops flash like birds' wings as they race for the waves. Everyone else is already down by the water, and just like the day before the weather's perfect, the sky impossibly blue.

Here's Jon coming out of the sea with his board under his arm, shaking himself all over like a wet, happy dog. There's Pete flirting with Ashlee as they unpack a picnic basket. Further up the beach Patrick's trying to tune the staticky battery-operated radio.

Within moments Spencer's splashing into the water too; but Ryan sets up camp on the sand. He lies on his towel beneath Crystal's polka-dot parasol, squinting through his sunglasses at a dog-eared copy of _The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde_.

He's read the stories a hundred times but soon loses himself in the words anyway. ('It was simply inevitable. We would have spoken to each other without any introduction. I am sure of that. Dorian told me so afterwards.') The voices of the beachgoers fade into the background, like the waves or the cries of the gulls overhead.

Until - _bam!_ A stray volleyball sends the book flying out of his hands.

"Shit," someone says, running up out of breath, hastily grabbing the book from the sand and brushing it off. "Shit, man, I'm so sorry, are you okay?"

Ryan adjusts his shades and sits up slowly, using the time to size up the stranger. The boy must be about Ryan's own age, dark-haired and bright-eyed and at this moment looking somewhat sheepish.

Someone _new_ , he thinks with a sharp pang of surprise. It's the first time it's happened since Ryan arrived; and already that seems like so long ago.

"Yeah," Ryan says at last, cautiously. "I'm okay."

And it's like a key turning in a lock - the boy smiles suddenly, dazzling. "I'm Brendon." He holds out the battered copy of _Wilde_ apologetically. His forearm's patterned in piano keys and hibiscus.

"Ryan," he replies, taking back the book.

"Hey, look, I'm really sorry about your book. Let me make it up to you?" Before Ryan can draw breath to respond to that, Brendon's turning to shout at a group of impatient volleyball players, "Just a minute!" He stands and grins down at Ryan, saying, "I'll be back, okay? Promise." And then he's running back down the beach, the ball tucked safely under his arm.

Shaking his head, Ryan rearranges himself beneath the umbrella and leafs through the book in an attempt to find his place again. But the urge to read is gone. He finds himself watching the volleyball players, trying to pick out the figure in red boardshorts.

Minutes drag by. He closes his eyes and makes himself say out loud, just in case, "He's not coming back."

"Who's not coming back?" Spencer says idly, dropping down on the sand beside him and dripping water everywhere. He scrubs his towel through his hair, standing it on end, rubs down his freckled arms and legs.

"No one," Ryan says flatly, and shuts the book with a snap.

"Come for a swim?" Spencer suggests. When he makes a show of hesitating, Spencer just gives him an amused look and hands over the bottle of sunscreen lotion.

"Like it even makes a difference," he grumbles, but he lathers it on anyway.

It's cool out in the water. He wades in up to his knees and then his waist and then further still, lets his feet sink down into the sand. A wave gathers and swells and he stands there with arms wide open to let it break right over him, his body swaying beneath the force of it. For a moment all sight and sound and feeling is just this endless blue, and he thinks to himself this must be how it feels when a spell's cast.

When he opens his eyes again he sees Andy and Joe, paddling past on their boards out to deep water; and further in the shallows Jon trying to tackle Tom, both of them yelling to him for assistance. He shakes his head, grinning. Instead he ducks his head down and kicks his feet out behind, arms out ahead.

He thinks about how far he could go, how far he could swim from the shore, before he ran out of strength or let himself sink. He feels his body moving strong and smooth and complete through the water and loses himself in the motion, arm over arm, legs kicking.

It's high noon when Ryan heads back to shore, the heat drying the moisture on his body almost as soon as he's in the air. He scans the beach for the polka-dot parasol - finally spots it, and with a start realises Brendon's waiting beneath it.

"Told you I'd be back," Brendon calls as he approaches. He's holding two luridly blue snowcones, one cup in each hand. "Brought you this," he says, holding out the untouched one.

"Oh." Ryan takes the snowcone and sits down, stretching out his legs, all pink next to Brendon's tanned ones. "You didn't have to - I mean, thank you," he says. A trickle of bright blue runs down the side of the cup and onto his hand. He doesn't mind. In fact he's a little charmed.

"It was nothing," Brendon says, ducking his head a little.

"So. You're new here," he says, licking at his snow cone, glancing at Brendon sideways. It's not a question.

Brendon laughs. "You're the fifth person to say that today. Am I that obvious? Dude, I have a better tan then you do, I thought I'd blend!"

"Yeah, well. It was the same for me when I first came here. Everyone knows everyone, you know." Ryan carefully traces the edge of the paper cup with his finger, raising a crust of ice crystals. "So of course you're gonna stand out."

"Everyone?" Brendon scrunches his face up thoughtfully, scanning the beach and everyone on it before turning that bright gaze back on Ryan. "I hardly know _anyone_. Are you gonna introduce me or what?" He grins at Ryan with lips stained only slightly blue, the kind of grin Ryan can't help returning.

"Sure," he says. "Later."

In the afternoon they go to the town for greasy pizza and milkshakes.

Spencer and Jon walk up ahead, arguing loudly but agreeably about whether anchovy belongs on pizza ("seriously, I'm telling you, in _Italy_ -" "but we're not _in_ Italy"). Lagging a few steps behind with Brendon, Ryan stops at the deserted bus stop and crouches down.

He holds out his hand and whistles softly at a small dog, curled up beneath the plastic bench. The dog uncurls and sniffs at Ryan's hand cautiously. "Come on, Hobo. Good boy." Just as Ryan thinks this time it'll finally let him touch it, the dog skitters back a step or two and barks sharply.

"Cute dog," Brendon offers from behind him. "Kinda nervy though."

"Yeah." Ryan sighs and stands. "I always hope he'll remember me. But I don't think it works that way." Aware of Brendon giving him a puzzled look, he shakes his head. "Never mind. Come on."

As dusk starts to fall the four of them make their way back to the beach. The twins and the other kids have gone home, but everyone that's left starts to gather for the evening bonfire. Butcher and Sisky are already busily dragging pieces of driftwood and ripping up cardboard boxes, adding them to the blackened circle of stones where other fires have been lit before.

On seeing their approach Gabe gives a jubilant whoop, as though it's been more than a few hours since they last met. He presses a beer into Ryan's hand and another into Brendon's, saying "good to see you dudes, stick around, tonight's gonna be smoking" all in the one rapid breath before moving on to the next person in the circle with a cry of "hey!" and wide-open arms. Ryan quirks his eyebrows at Brendon, and smiles when Brendon laughs.

When the wood and kindling's all gathered, Butcher rattles a box of matches. "Okay people, stand back if you wanna keep all your eyebrows and fingers and toes."

It take a few tries - maybe more than a few, with the Butcher quietly swearing at every burnt-out match - but the bonfire finally comes alive. Everyone cheers.

"To the last day of summer!" William says grandly from his position on top of a milk crate, swaying slightly. He cuts a striking figure in the fading light, and judging from the way he tosses his hair back he probably knows it. Ryan and Spencer exchange speaking glances, but like everyone else they too raise their drinks and toast.

"To summer," Ryan says solemnly.

"To summer!" Brendon says, clinking their bottles.

It gets rowdy pretty quick, the liquor flowing freely and everyone talking over the top of one another. Patrick's got the radio tuned to some golden oldies and classic rock station, Elvis followed by Springsteen followed by Fleetwood Mac, and he turns it up loud.

The Beach Boys' 'Do you want to dance' crackles through the airwaves and Ryland coaxes Vicky-T up to her feet. She makes a token resistance before giving in, laughing with her head thrown back, trying not to spill her drink as she curls her arm around his neck. A few moments later Butcher and Sisky are up on their feet too, swaying together in drunken mockery; but Siska's smile against Butcher's neck is real enough, and they don't fool anyone.

Ryan looks sideways at Brendon, and catches him looking back. Just as he opens his mouth to say, _hey, do you wanna_ -

"Everyone, let's go down to the shack tonight," William suggests loudly, still on top of the milk crate, steadied by Gabe's arm around his waist. There's an abandoned vacation house set back a bit from the beach, its windows smashed and walls covered in graffiti. "Who wants to go to the shack?"

There's a chorus of scattered _yeahs_ and _okays_.

"Are you gonna go?" Brendon asks, looking to Ryan for a lead.

Ryan shakes his head slowly. "No," he says. "Maybe later."

The party by the fire starts to break up, most of them trailing William and Gabe, with Jon and Spencer straggling at the rear. They take the radio so while they're soon out of sight, they're only slowly out of earshot.

As the last strains of music fade, Ryan looks around. Although there's still quite a few people left by the bonfire, he realises he doesn't want to talk to a single one of them, not tonight.

The first beer loosened him up and the second one makes him bold. He drains the last drop and tosses the empty in the sand. "Come on," he says, and closes his hand gently around Brendon's bicep. "I wanna show you something."

The moon's light is a faintly wavering thing, hiding as much as it illuminates. For him the beach is familiar ground but Brendon slips and swears softly. Turning, Ryan holds out his hand. Brendon takes it, and that's how they make their way to the top of the dune, hand in hand.

"So what did you want to show me?" Brendon says curiously when they pause at the summit.

Ryan looks out to sea, the great dark blankness that merges into the sky. "Nothing," he admits after a moment. "It was just a line."

Annoyingly, Brendon starts to laugh, so Ryan shuts him up by pulling him in for a kiss. Brendon tastes like salt and beer; he smells like the sea. They kiss like that for a while, pressed for warmth against one another in the cool summer breeze.

Brendon pulls back a little, shivering in his thin t-shirt. "I'm getting really cold out here," he admits. His smile is sweet; he doesn't let go of Ryan's hand.

"Yeah, me too." He wishes they'd thought to bring a picnic blanket, or at least a beach towel. "Back to the bonfire, I guess."

A couple of people look up and give them knowing smiles, and on seeing their joined hands Vicky-T gives a low teasing whistle (Brendon turns red and sticks his tongue out). Otherwise, no one says a thing.

They sit down on Ryan's towel, backs propped up against a couple of milk crates. Lulled by the warmth and the booze, Brendon yawns and rests his head on Ryan's shoulder, and pretty soon Ryan starts to feel sleepy too.

 _Can't go to sleep yet_ , he thinks to himself as firmly as he can, _not tonight_. His head nods a little and he yawns, thinking muzzily, _I'll just close my eyes for a quick second..._

.  
.  
.

... and wakes up in his bed. It's the last day of summer, and his sunburn is itching.

He's second last down to breakfast. Though he only beats Spencer by a matter of minutes, that's unusual enough for Spencer to give Ryan a suspicious look. He says, "You'd better not have eaten the last of the Apple Jacks."

"Sorry," Ryan says unrepentantly, taking another spoonful and crunching extra loud.

But when Crystal and Jackie start saying "beach! beach!" and he doesn't protest, Spencer gives him another narrow-eyed stare.

"What's with you today?" Spencer asks quietly as they leave the house, the twins running on ahead as they always do.

"Nothing," he says. It sounds defensive, even to himself.

"Well," Spencer says after a moment, inscrutable behind his shades. "I think I can take a guess." And coughs into his hand with a sound that's suspiciously like _brendon_.

He rolls his eyes. "Shut up."

Everyone is already down by the water. The weather's perfect, the sky impossibly blue. Here's Jon splashing in the shallows, Pete and Ashlee flirting over the picnic basket - and there's Brendon, cross-legged, watching the beach from a spot high in the dunes.

When he hesitates, Spencer sighs. "Go on," he says, and gives him a little push in Brendon's direction. "He's new, he'll want to talk. I'll see you later.

Slowly he makes his way across the sand. "Hey," he says, pushing his shades up.

"Hey, Ryan." Brendon gives him a slightly anxious smile.

Ryan sits down on the sand beside him and waits. Below the beach's busy with surfers and sunbathers, swimmers, sleepers. All familiar faces. All of it, in fact, familiar - he's been here long enough to feel he could recognise everything, down to the last rockpool, the last shell on the beach.

"I'm not going crazy, am I?" Brendon says at last.

"No. You're not. At least," he amends, "if you are, so are the rest of us."

Brendon shakes his head, rubs his hand through his hair. "I don't get it," he says, sounding painfully confused.

"What's to get?" Ryan says. "It's the last day of summer. And it always will be." He tilts his head questioningly, with what he hopes is a persuasive look. "Well? You gonna come down to the water with me or not?"

"Always summer." Brendon smiles a little less hesitantly. It's not great but it's a start. "Guess I can live with that."

.  
.  
.

This is how it goes:

Ryan wakes each day to the morning sun in his eyes, walks down to the beach with Spencer and the girls, and finds Brendon waiting on the sand.

There's Brendon, and Jon and Pete and Ashlee and Patrick and William and Gabe and Vicky-T and all the rest. But no grown-ups, no school or rules or responsibilities.

So they sunbake, play volleyball, go surfing, build sandcastles, skate down the empty boulevard. They lie side by side on brightly coloured beach towels doing absolutely nothing at all. Books and magazines lie open and unread while the radio blares in the background, while they talk and laugh and sing and only occasionally fall silent.

They swim and swim for hours, splashing around in the shallows and then racing out to the furthest buoy, the winner their king or queen for the rest of the day. For a while they tread water in the deep blue sea, until one of them says, "You ready?" And then they race all the way back, matching stroke for stroke, kick for kick.

Some nights they toast marshmallows on the bonfire and do stoned singalongs, accompanied by acoustic guitars and kegs turned into makeshift drums.

When they feel wild, they go wild. They go up to the shack and take hits from makeshift bongs, swig vodka until they fall down, take e's and dance for hours. Everyone parties hard and there's never any hangovers, never ever any comedowns.

Some nights Ryan slips away with Brendon to some secluded place on the beach or the back seat of a parked car. At times they're frantic from a day of waiting. Fumbling and desperate, they get each other off with their hands, their mouths - "just _quickly_ , come _on_."

Other times they kiss for an age before they undo a single button, 'cause it's not like there's any hurry, right? No, no hurry at all.

Ryan falls asleep next to Brendon more times than he could ever count...

... and always wakes in his own bed, alone. That's the worst part, Ryan thinks, the moment after waking when all he can feel is that loss, that absence.

But it only lasts a moment. He'll stand up too quickly, dizzy with the knowledge that within minutes he'll be walking down that same path to the same beach where Brendon will be watching the sea and waiting. When Ryan calls his name he'll look back over his shoulder, and smile.

He and Brendon play out all the ways you can fall in love over the course of a single day, and then they play them all again; and when they kiss it's like the first time, over and over.

So the sun rises, the sun sets. It's always the last day of summer and always will be.

.  
.  
.

Spencer's the first one to say it. He strikes a match with his thumbnail and holds the flame up to eye-level, saying almost idly, "Let's burn down the shack."

Nate overhears and takes it up with a shout. "Let's burn down the shack! Let's burn down the shack!" He runs around the room, saying it to anyone who'll listen. And plenty of people are listening.

As the talk turns excited, Brendon splutters on a mouthful of beer. "Are you guys serious?"

"Pretty much, yeah," Spencer says. He lifts his chin in Gabe's direction. "See?"

"Oh, yeah," Gabe's saying to Nate, his face lighting up. " _Yeah_. Shit, dudes, let's make some fucking firewood!"

To emphasise his point, he picks up the nearest crate and smashes it down against the floor. Ryland and Suarez and Nate all cheer, arms raised up high.

Encouraged, Gabe seizes a wooden chair and smashes that too, and then everyone starts laying into whatever's closest to hand. The furniture gets stomped and kicked to pieces, the curtains torn down. The mattress and threadbare couch are ripped up, stuffing flying, and added to a growing pile of wood and rubbish and kindling on the living room floor. As a final touch they roll a couple of canisters inside and douse the place in kerosene.

The house slowly empties, everyone gathering out front with their beers and bongs, chattering like kids at a party just before the cake comes out.

"Okay, I'm gonna start it," Andy says, lighting up a molotov cocktail. "Everyone stand the fuck back!" He throws the bottle in through a shattered window, everyone falling silent as it arcs through the air.

First there's a burst of light and the muffled _whomp_ of the canisters catching. A few moments later the fire begins blazing in earnest, suffusing the whole building with a warm red glow. That's when everyone starts hollering and whistling and stomping their feet.

"Burn it down!" Pete yells, perched in the branches of a tree. "Burn that motherfucker down!"

The flames start licking out the windows and through the roof, and Ryan watches it all with giggles rising in his throat. He's maybe more than a little stoned.

"Lift me up," he hears Brendon saying to Jon, "c'mon!" Hoisted up on Jon's shoulders, Brendon laughs and spreads his arms wide, as though to welcome the fire that's consuming the shack entire, the roof starting to buckle and the first floor now entirely ablaze.

Grinning from his spot up in the tree, Pete lifts the radio to his shoulder and turns it up as high as it will go. And everyone starts dancing, dancing, as the ash starts to fall down and around like rain.

Hours later, with the ruins of the house still smouldering, they all stagger down to the beach to wait for the dawn. As they walk, Ryan glances at Brendon and away, then glances again.

"Hey! What're you staring at?" Brendon says at last, wrinkling his nose.

"You have soot on your face," Ryan says solemnly. He licks his thumb and tries to swipe it off, and ends up tussling with Brendon the rest of the way to the beach.

As the sky starts to redden, everyone spreads out along the shoreline. Ryan, holding hands with Brendon, sitting with Spencer and Jon, thinks it's been a pretty good night.

Then the sun rises.

They fall asleep where they sit and stand. One by one, like toppling dominoes, helpless.

Later they'll wake in their own beds, in their houses. The shack will be whole once more. They'll burn it again some other day.

.  
.  
.

Ryan has never learned to surf properly - no instinct and no muscle memory - but Brendon's not bad at all.

"I used to surf, before," he says by way of explanation the third time Ryan gets dumped by a wave that Brendon rides easily. "Aw, come on. I can't help that I'm better then you... at _everything_."

"Whatever," Ryan says, grumpily drying off.

Brendon laughs and rubs a sandy hand through Ryan's hair, yelping when Ryan retaliates by pinching his arm.

The real surfers are Joe and Andy and the Michaels. While the rest of them are on the beach or in the shallows, they'll be riding the waves for hours on end. From up on the dunes, they seem serene and distant, effortless.

That's why it's such a shock - and it's so rare to be shocked by _anything_ on the beach - when Joe gets nailed by a nasty wave. He cracks his head on his board, goes under, and doesn't resurface. They both see it.

"Shit," Brendon says, dropping his towel in the sand. Before Ryan can say anything, he's running down to the water. Ryan swears and follows, five or six paces behind.

With steady strokes Brendon makes for the spot where Joe went under. Ryan sees him take a deep breath and then dive. There's a sickening, all-too-long moment before he comes up again, empty-handed.

"Brendon!" he shouts from his place knee-deep in the waves, his voice thin and useless against the ocean crashing. He waves frantically, _come back_. "Brendon, stop!"

Brendon ignores him, takes another deep breath, and dives.

On the beach, people are starting to pick up on what's happening. A group gathers, and Spencer comes to stand beside him. They all watch from the shore, silent, as Brendon dives a third time. No one makes a move to follow him into the water.

"Ryan," Spencer says at last, low and warning. "Ryan, he's not-"

"I know, okay?" Ryan says grimly. "Oh, fuck this. Fuck you all." He marches into the water and strikes out in Brendon's direction.

By the time Ryan makes it out there, Brendon's exhausted and barely resists when he tugs him towards the shore. They swim back side by side, slowly, Brendon looking back several times as though there's still a chance.

When they get back to the sand the crowd's dispersed; Spencer's doing, Ryan suspects. No one's around to watch Brendon flop onto his back in the sand and cry.

Ryan lays a tentative hand on his arm but Brendon shakes him off, hissing as though his touch burns. "Why didn't you do anything?" Brendon chokes out, rubbing at the tears streaming down his face. "Why were you telling me to stop?"

"Brendon," he says, "it's not that -"

"You know I could see you watching," Brendon says furiously, sitting up and scrubbing at his eyes. "I saw you all _watching_ , jesus _fuck_." He pounds the sand with his fist. "Why didn't any of you do anything? Why didn't you _help_?"

He looks down at his hands, away from the accusation in Brendon's eyes, searching for the words to explain. He comes up with a story instead, one that he hasn't told anyone but Spencer before - though he suspects most of the others would have similar stories to tell, too, if he asked the right questions.

"Listen," Ryan says at last. "Brendon, one time I tried - I mean, I swam out to sea, once. As far out as I could go."

He looks confused. "Trying to rescue someone, you mean?"

"No," he says carefully, meeting Brendon's eyes and willing him to understand. "No, I was just swimming. As far as I could go," he says slowly. "All on my own. Just to see what would happen."

"Just to see -?" Brendon starts to say before breaking off sharply, looking shocked.

He nods. "For hours. I swam for hours." Alone, with the perfect blue sky above and the darkness of the deep below. "Until my arms were like lead, and my legs couldn't even move, and then further. I wanted to be," he pauses, trying to think of the right word. "Sure," he says. "I wanted to be sure."

"And then?" Brendon draws his knees up to his chest.

"I fell asleep," Ryan says simply. "And then I woke up again."

That night there's no parties, no wild antics. No one mentions what happened on the beach that day, but no one needs to.

The next day Joe's back at the beach, riding the waves like nothing ever happened, and no one says a word about that either.

.  
.  
.

One morning, not many days after the surfing accident, Ryan and Spencer walk down to the beach and Brendon's not there. Ryan folds his arms and looks around, trying and completely failing to be casual.

"Weird," Spencer says flatly. He looks at Ryan through his shades and says without needing to be asked, "You look for him. I'll take your bag."

In the end it's not hard to find him. Ryan's walking down the deserted main street when he spots Brendon sitting at the bus stop. Kicking at the ground with his purple flip-flops, he seems even younger than usual.

"Hey," he says, loudly.

Brendon looks up, only surprised for a moment before smiling wanly. "Hey." He shuffles over to make room and Ryan sits down awkwardly, keeping a little apart.

He drums his fingers against the bench and says abruptly, "Look, you know there's no bus out of here, right?"

Brendon rubs at his face wearily with both hands. "I know. I know." He drops his hands back to his lap and grimaces. "I just hoped -"

He breaks off and slides across the bench, closing the gap to rest his head against Ryan's shoulder, his arm stealing around Ryan's waist. Ryan can only stay stiff-backed for a moment before he's leaning against Brendon too.

"I've been up since five this morning. Just thinking, you know?" Brendon says. "Like maybe we could steal a car and take turns driving. We'd drive in shifts, so one of us would be awake all the time."

"Or we could take fifty cases of Red Bull and stay up together," Ryan suggests after a moment.

"Yeah. Yeah, something like that. And we'd drive all night and into the next morning. At first it would be all desert, for miles and miles and miles around. But then we'd get to the mountains, and there'd be trees and stuff."

Ryan rests his chin against the top of Brendon's head and closes his eyes. He imagines the greenery of the forest, the sound of birds. Deer that startle at their approach. A cabin in the woods and a river running beside it.

"Higher up, and there'd even be some snow. We could ski," Brendon says wistfully. "We could snowboard."

"You could snowboard," Ryan says, opening his eyes. "I'd just fall off."

"Yeah." Brendon's shoulders shake with muffled laughter. "I bet you would."

"Come on," Ryan says. "Let's go for a swim."

.  
.  
.

Later - maybe the same day, or maybe another day, it makes no difference after all - they're walking on the beach around sunset.

They stop to watch the sky turning to red and gold. The tide's coming in and the sea laps first at their toes and then slowly their ankles, every wave creeping higher and higher.

"Pretty," Ryan says idly, before adding, "I just wish it'd rain once in a while, you know?"

"Uh huh." Brendon toes at the remains of one of Pete's elaborately multi-tiered, multi-towered sandcastles. "And that's the _only_ thing you wish for?"

"Well," Ryan says, and stops.

He remembers words that are written by night and vanish by morning, of books he's read a hundred times before. He imagines singing new songs. Seeing Paris, and Tokyo, and New York. Mountains. Snow.

Falling asleep next to someone, and waking up with them too.

After a moment Ryan just shrugs. They stand hand in hand and wait as the sea washes away their footprints and Pete's sandcastle, leaving the beach a beautiful, pale blank.

* * *

 

 _A bonus scene, featuring DeLeon and Cash from The Cab. This takes place some time after the main story._

 **Pizza**

For the most part town is a deserted place. There are no storeowners, assistants, cops, or shoppers. The shops and restaurants lie open and unattended, just waiting for them to walk inside and take what they want, like candy bars and booze and hot dogs and sodas.

At the milkbar they compete at making increasingly elaborate sundaes, or take turns working the coffee machine (Jon's coffee is the best, everyone agrees). They scoop handfuls of quarters from the open till and go down to the arcade to play Space Invaders until the high score screen runs out of zeroes, until there's not a single alien left to explode.

One day, hunger sharpened from an extended session of air hockey, Jon and Spencer head across the road to the pizza place, expecting as usual to walk in and grab slices from the counter and colas from the fridge.

They _don't_ expect to find a curly-haired kid behind the counter, doodling on a notepad and yawning. He's wearing some kind of uniform, complete with cap and a neatly written nametag: DeLeon.

As they walk in there's an almighty crash of plates and cutlery from somewhere in the kitchen. "Jeez, Cash. What did you break this time?" DeLeon says, still doodling on his notepad.

"Fuck off!" someone yells back.

Spencer and Jon exchange speaking looks. Shrugging, Jon clears his throat and steps up to the counter.

DeLeon looks up and brightens immediately. "Oh, hey guys. What can I get ya?"

"Hey, DeLeon. I'm Jon and this is Spencer." Jon smiles his most charming smile and puts his hands down on the counter. "Let me guess. You're new here, aren't you?"

"Yeah, I guess it's kinda obvious." His grin fades as he takes in their pitying expressions. "Uh. Why? What's wrong?" He looks at each of them in turn, anxiously.

"Kid." Spencer shakes his head. "You don't have to be here."

"Wh-what?"

"Leave the shop," Jon says kindly. "Take off. Head to the beach. Get out of here. Just leave the door open and go."

"Um." He laughs nervously and shoves his pencil behind his ear. "You guys are kidding, right?"

"Does it look like we're kidding?" Spencer folds his arms.

"Seriously. We're _telling_ you. There's not gonna be any customers. Trust me," Jon says, hand on his heart. "It's the last day of summer and you do _not_ have to be here."

The door from the kitchen flies open with a bang. It's the other kid, Cash. He has shorn hair and tattooed hands and a really big grin.

"For real?" Cash says hopefully. "YES. I was about to fucking quit this stupidass job anyway!" And he takes off his apron and hairnet, throws them to the ground and jumps on them.

"Yeah! Right on, that's the attitude," Jon says encouragingly, and holds his hand up. Cash slaps him a high five, and makes Spencer give him one too. Then all three of them look at DeLeon expectantly.

"Well." Carefully, DeLeon unpins his nametag and places it beneath the counter. "I _guess_ we can go to the beach," he says slowly, taking out a set of keys, "since it is like the last day of summer and all. But I don't think we should really leave the shop _open_ , so you guys go ahead, I'm just gonna lock -"

"Come on, DeLeon," Cash scoffs. "Quit being such a square."

Jon watches interestedly as DeLeon flushes bright red. "I'm not a _square_."

"Oh yeah?" Cash says, getting right up into DeLeon's face, jabbing a finger at his chest. "Then prove it." Before DeLeon can splutter out a reply, Cash snatches the keys out of his hand and bolts out the door.

"You - you asshole!" DeLeon pushes past Jon and Spencer. He follows Cash out into the street, running two steps behind, half-yelling and half-laughing.

Jon and Spencer follow at a more leisurely pace. It's easy enough to follow their path: both Cash and DeLeon are shedding their uniforms as they run, tugging off shirts and shoes and socks. They leave a trail of clothes all down the boulevard and on to the sand.

As they splash into the waves, Cash turns back to DeLeon, holding the keys up above his head. "Still want these?" he says, calling to be heard above the waves.

"Nah. Screw it." DeLeon, panting and out of breath, smiles suddenly. "I mean, it's the last day of summer, right?"

"Right." Cash grins back.

He pulls his arm back and throws the keys as far as he possibly can; they fall into the ocean, and disappear.


End file.
